The request came through official channels on a Tuesday morning, carefully worded and requiring multiple levels of approval. Obito wanted to visit Team Minato's old training ground—Training Ground 7, where three children had once learned to work together under the guidance of a young man who believed in their potential.
Tsunade's response was swift and practical: supervised visit only, minimal security presence to avoid drawing attention, and Kakashi would serve as primary escort. The last detail was either cruel irony or deliberate therapy, depending on one's perspective on the healing power of confronting painful memories.
The training ground lay on the village's outskirts, far enough from residential areas to allow for destructive jutsu practice but close enough for easy access. Obito remembered the walk—had made it hundreds of times as a child, sometimes racing ahead of his teammates in his eagerness to begin training, sometimes dragging behind when he dreaded whatever lesson awaited.
Now he walked it slowly, deliberately, with Kakashi beside him and ANBU maintaining discrete surveillance from the treeline. The path was unchanged, still the same dirt track worn smooth by generations of young shinobi pursuing their dreams. But everything else felt different, layered with the weight of time and tragedy and the particular sadness that came with revisiting places where innocence had died.
"You sure about this?" Kakashi asked as they approached the clearing.
"No," Obito replied. "But I need to see it."
The training ground opened before them like a amphitheater of memory. Three wooden posts stood in the center of the clearing, weathered but intact, surrounded by the scars of countless training sessions. Trees bearing kunai marks, earth churned and reformed by jutsu practice, the small stream where they had sometimes eaten lunch on days when Minato-sensei felt generous with their time.
Everything smaller than he remembered. Everything the same.
"The survival test," Obito said, walking toward the center post. "You tied me to this one because I tried to eat without sharing."
"You were starving," Kakashi replied, moving to stand beside the left post. "And stubborn. You would have passed out before admitting you needed help."
"Rin convinced you to share anyway." Obito's hand brushed the rope marks still visible in the wood. "She always could see through your act."
"What act?"
"The one where you pretended not to care about anyone. Where you followed rules because they were rules, not because you understood why they mattered."
Kakashi was quiet for a moment, his visible eye distant with memory. "I wasn't pretending," he said finally. "I really didn't understand. Not until later. Not until it was too late to matter."
They stood in the clearing where their team had been born, where three children had learned the hard lesson that individual strength meant nothing without trust and cooperation. Obito could almost see them—his twelve-year-old self struggling against the ropes, Kakashi radiating cold disapproval, Rin pleading for compassion that seemed beyond reach.
"We were so young," he said.
"Too young for what we were asked to carry."
"No." Obito shook his head. "We were exactly young enough. Old enough to be shaped by our experiences, young enough to believe we could change the world. The problem wasn't our age—it was what we did with that belief."
The distinction was important. Their youth hadn't been a disadvantage to be overcome but a resource to be channeled. Minato had understood that, had seen their potential not despite their inexperience but because of it. He had shaped them into weapons, yes, but also into people capable of growth and change and the kind of bonds that could transcend individual ambition.
"Tell me about that day," Obito said. "The test. What you were thinking."
Kakashi moved to the spot where he had once stood guard over his bound teammate, his posture unconsciously echoing the rigid discipline of his younger self. "I was thinking about my father," he said quietly. "About what happened to shinobi who put their comrades before the mission. I was thinking that following the rules would keep us safe."
"And when Rin started sharing her food anyway?"
"I was angry. Frustrated that she couldn't see the bigger picture, that she was jeopardizing our evaluation for the sake of sentiment."
"But you shared too. Eventually."
"Because she made me understand that the test wasn't about following orders. It was about recognizing when the orders were wrong."
They walked the perimeter of the training ground, past the tree where Rin had once carved their names, past the boulder where Minato had demonstrated advanced chakra control techniques, past the spot where they had sparred and argued and slowly learned to trust each other. Each location carried its own weight of memory, its own echo of voices that would never speak again.
"He was proud of us," Obito said, stopping at the place where Minato used to observe their training. "Whatever else happened later, whatever we became, he was proud of what we accomplished as a team."
"Do you think he would still be proud?" Kakashi asked. "If he could see us now?"
It was a question that had no comfortable answer. What would Minato think of the men his students had become? Would he see growth in their survival, wisdom in their suffering, or would he only see the ways they had failed to live up to his teachings?
"I think he would be proud that we're here," Obito said finally. "Together, trying to understand what went wrong and how to make it right. He always believed that bonds between teammates could overcome anything."
"Even this?"
"Especially this."
As the afternoon wore on, they found themselves gravitating toward the memorial stone that had been erected after the Third Shinobi War. It was smaller than the main monument in the village center, dedicated specifically to the shinobi who had died during that conflict. Rin's name was there, carved in the same style as hundreds of others, marking her passage from life to memory.
"I used to come here," Kakashi said quietly. "After missions, when things went wrong, when I needed to remember why we do this work. I would talk to her name on the stone and pretend she could hear me."
"What did you tell her?"
"Everything. Mission reports, personal problems, questions about whether I was making the right choices. She was always the conscience of our team—it seemed natural to keep asking for her guidance."
Obito knelt beside the stone, his fingers tracing the carved letters of Rin's name. Such a small mark to represent an entire life, an entire future that had been cut short. But perhaps that was the point—memorials weren't meant to contain the fullness of the people they honored, only to ensure they weren't forgotten.
"I'm going to do better," he said to the stone, to her memory, to the ghost of the girl who had tried to hold them together. "I'm going to try to become someone who deserves to have been your teammate."
"We both are," Kakashi added.
As they prepared to leave, Obito took one last look around the training ground. The posts, the trees, the scarred earth—all of it would remain long after he was gone, a physical reminder of the place where Team Minato had learned to be more than the sum of its parts.
"Can we come back?" he asked. "Not soon, but... eventually?"
"Yes," Kakashi replied. "When you're ready, when it feels right, we can come back."
The walk back to the village was quiet, both men lost in their own thoughts about the past and the uncertain future ahead. But there was something different in the quality of their silence now—not the uncomfortable tension of unresolved conflict, but the shared understanding of people who had survived something together and were committed to making that survival meaningful.
That night, Obito wrote a letter to his sensei. Not to be sent—there was no postal system that reached the afterlife—but as a promise, a commitment to the memory of the man who had seen potential in three broken children and believed they could become something greater.
Sensei,
I know I disappointed you. I know the man I became was nothing like the student you tried to shape. But I want you to know that I'm trying to find my way back to the lessons you taught us.
About teamwork. About sacrifice. About the bonds that make us stronger than we could ever be alone.
I can't undo what I've done, but I can try to honor what you believed we could become. I can try to be worthy of having been your student.
Thank you for seeing something worth saving in a stubborn kid who thought he knew better than everyone else.
Your student,
Obito
It wasn't redemption. It wasn't even the beginning of redemption. But it was a promise—to the dead, to the living, to himself. A commitment to growth, to change, to becoming someone who could stand in that training ground and feel pride instead of shame.
It was a start.